YouTube and Reddit are sued for allegedly enabling the racist mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead
(fortune.com)
from Anonymau5@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 11 Sep 2023 13:32
https://lemmy.world/post/4861236
from Anonymau5@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 11 Sep 2023 13:32
https://lemmy.world/post/4861236
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/3320637
YouTube and Reddit are sued for allegedly enabling the racist mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead::The complementary lawsuits claim that the massacre in 2022 was made possible by tech giants, a local gun shop, and the gunman’s parents.
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
YouTube, Reddit and a body armor manufacturer were among the businesses that helped enable the gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, according to a pair of lawsuits announced Wednesday.
The complementary lawsuits filed by Everytown Law in state court in Buffalo claim that the massacre at Tops supermarket in May 2022 was made possible by a host of companies and individuals, from tech giants to a local gun shop to the gunman’s parents.
The lawsuit claims Mean LLC manufactured an easily removable gun lock, offering a way to circumvent New York laws prohibiting assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.
YouTube, named with parent companies Alphabet Inc. and Google, is accused of contributing to the gunman’s radicalization and helping him acquire information to plan the attack.
“We aim to change the corporate and individual calculus so that every company and every parent recognizes they have a role to play in preventing future gun violence,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.
Last month, victims’ relatives filed a lawsuit claiming tech and social media giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google bear responsibility for radicalizing Gendron.
The original article contains 592 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good. Civil court is where they’re most vulnerable, this is called tort law.
In criminal cases, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers. In a civil lawsuit, the defendant is only innocent until a judge, or jury, depending thinks they’re 51% likely to be guilty, what they call the preponderance of evidence.
In other words, “probably” is good enough when you sue someone. It is not good enough if the state is trying to throw you in prison. This makes it more efficient to process the 99% of civil court cases, which are usually just dumb shit, like which of these two arguing neighbors needs to pay for having a tree on their property line cut down or something. It also results in our civil system being a very effective weapon though, as a lot of wealthier and more powerful people know pretty well.
edit for italics
edit2: If anyone doubts me you can just google “tort” and read all about our American system on wikipedia, or any number of other places.
edit3: juries in civil too.
I don't really know why you emphasized judge. Jury trials are very common in civil cases. This will be a pretrial dismissal or summary judgement without a jury, however. There's nothing to discover or evidence to review that's contested.
True, jury trials are common in civil. They’re just not the majority, and I’m trying to draw a simplified picture I suppose. It’ll edit it again.
Everytown Law is about to get a lesson on how Section 230 works.
Pretty sure SCOTUS has a case they’re hearing currently that may very well change the scope of section 230 so I’d maybe reserve your quips until after that shakes out lol
The two big cases this year were already decided: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter,_Inc._v._Taamneh and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalez_v._Google_LLC
Although both dodged the S230 claims, both made it clear that Twitter and Google, respectively, had no liability.
Is there another case I missed?
::: spoiler spoiler
sadfasfasdfsa
:::
Ah, to be based on selective history and tradition.
Big tech says no.
This isn’t the first time they’ve forgotten how various laws work. And they keep losing. Kinda makes you wonder if it’s intentional or not.
I don’t really know what their goal is here. Surely they’re not stupid enough to think they could actually win this?
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Reddit enables more than just racist, it's a nasty cesspool the like of 4chan, riddled with bots, the CEO himself is a POS.
… I mean you’re preaching to the choir.
It’s a fucked up website but if you think it’s remotely as bad as 4chan then I’ve assumed you’ve never been to /pol/. Reddit doesn’t allow the n word.
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It’s literally rule 1…
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Not sure what subs you’re on but I can’t remember the last time I saw that word outside of the r/4chan mod bot saying the comment was removed for it and they were quarantined.
Considering I got permabanned for saying if we wanted to find out if the brazen bull was a real thing we could test it on child molesters the rule is very much enforced. That’s way less bad than the nword.
lol even mods don’t follow rules on reddit and there are private subs where people do whatever the hell they want.
users are still toxic
Yes, but the site does not promote those, unlike in 4chan
Go to r/4chan or r/Greentext, it’s all over the comment sections there
I went on /pol and did Ctrl f + n word, got 7 results. Can’t say reddit is even slightly that bad. I’m sure it still gets said, but it’s very much looked down upon. Where in 4chan it’s just a normal word, and so is the f slur.
how and why
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and they make fun of reddit when they're not the right people to make fun of reddit
Same with this site. All social media. All.
Agreed. Spez's support of The_Donald was the beginning of the end (although as he was a mod of jailbait before it was banned, it was clear that Trump wasn't the genesis of Spez's sickness), and now there's nothing left of the communities that made it great. There's hasn't been anything rewarding about contributing there since about 2014.
Will be dismissed on section 230 grounds.
Their content promotion algorithms are not protected by section 230. Those algorithms are the real problem, pushing more and more radical content onto vulnerable minds. (The alt-right YouTube pipeline is pretty well documented. Reddit, I think, less so. But they still promote "similar content")
Section 230 requires "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#:~:text=good fa… Selection of click-bait algorithms is a choice. At least, they could select out promotion of murder and maiming without a sled ride.
I'll post this link.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/07/yet-another-study-debunks-the-youtubes-algorithm-drives-people-to-extremism-argument/
We all know that there's horrible, racist shit on youtube. But it seems like you have to actively search for it before it's offered as a recommendation.
Our only hope for sensible gun rights is that accountability needs to be beyond just the person who pulled the trigger.
I feel like our problem isn’t that social media companies are not liable but that they are too big, like imagine this happening on mastodon. Generally I feel like mastodon would not allow this unless the instance was specificlly facist like the KF instance
I dont think the Fediverse is a good example of not allowing certain activities.
I think the root of the problem is the Republican party. If you look at the language the shooter used in his manifesto, it’s very very similar. There are things social media platforms can do to mitigate extremism, but people like this will continue to feel emboldened by the GOP.
They should be suing the Conservative Party. That’s the enabler of gun violence.
hm yes, let’s look at who commits the most gun violence in the US, surely it is conservatives!
Yes?
Lmao you should read up
No u.
Here, I’ll give you a head start:
University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
You’ll notice that’s double the incidents from the right vs the left.
Military Times, which no one could reasonably claim has any liberal bias
West Point Combating Terrorism Center – and again, West Point can hardly be called liberal
Can you provide legitimate, unbiased sources for your claims? Because all the data says you’re being lied to.
I live in LA def ain’t conservatives out here shooting it up. I can just go see if in real life stay to your online life
Mhm. Your anecdotal ‘feels’ outweigh actual data, sounds about right(wing).
How about you at least try to back up what you say with anything at all beyond ‘I believe it’s true’? Because nobody outside your bubble is going to take that seriously.
I’m from a city roughly the size and makeup of LA, so you can keep your ‘online life’ comment to yourself.
e-side note: real people are behind these usernames, you know. Not NPCs or drones, but actual people with lives sharing similarities to your own in varying degrees. People aren’t black and white caricatures, and treating them as though they’re hypothetical characters in fake worlds further detaches you from them and can lead to a distorted worldview.
It’s important keep remembering that, because bad actors have been working hard to take advantage of the tendency we all have towards this.
Go take a political litmus test of every gang member in the US and see how many are conservatives.
Active shooters make a drop in the pale comparatively, they’re just the ones the media focuses on because it’s the narrative they prefer.
You really don’t see why the media would focus on a random mass killing instead of 2 scumbags shooting at each other over drugs? Weird.
2? More like thousands. If guns are the problem, then guns are the problem. We don’t need to focus on specific gun crime when those crimes are once again a drop in the bucket.
That’s why it’s weird.
Guns are indeed the problem. As every other developed nation shows.
Why people still claim the US is developed beats me, they belong in the same line as Brazil and Mexico (no offence Brazilians and Mexicans)
Ah yes, the famously politically active gang members.
They shoot each other in the name of societal wealth distribution, everyone knows that
Politically Active? Since when was that the metric? We are just talking about political alignment.
And why do you think they’re Dem?
They likely don’t care about politics
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Crips and Bloods out there endorsing Biden.
🙄
I’m pretty sure most cops lean right soooo
Learn the difference between the concept of one who enables the crime, and one who commits the crime.
If you’re having a hard time understanding how our law handles such a thing:
Read up on a guy named Charles Manson. Then delete your dumb shit.
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“The conservative party enables gun violence” and “conservatives commit the most gun violence” are completely separate and independent statements. The person you’re replying to is saying the former, not the latter.
In other words, they aren’t saying that Republicans commit the majority of gun violence, but that the policies championed and implemented by Republicans are responsible for gun violence occurring.
And whether or not Republicans like it, they admit this all the time, although not the way you’d think. The GOP likes to say that mental health is the driver of gun violence and mass shootings, but simultaneously, the GOP votes against improved mental healthcare and even slashes funding for it.
Ah yes, the conservative party makes all those gangbangers get illegal guns and shoot each other up.
brilliant comment.
Learn what ENABLE means. Then come back and learn fit your dumb shit.
Most shootings happen with legally bought guns, but okay.
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why don’t you tell me how I am wrong?
we both know I am 100% correct.
Quit being obtuse. You know as well as I do that conservatives ENABLE the gun violence we see every day. It’s baked right into the bullshit policy they enact, the laws they block, and the gun manufacturers that pay them their salaries.
It’s weird that this is a link to the exact same 25 day old post on the same community.
The gun(s) are the most significant enablers of mass shootings.
Complete lack of accessible mental health counseling enters the room.
Plenty of countries have issues providing enough healthcare, only one has the US gun culture.
It’s easier to get guns in many EU countries than many US states.
And do those states have fewer mass shootings?
No. California has some of the strictest gun laws and leads the country in mass shootings. New York also has ridiculously strict gun laws and is up there on the mass shootings count as well.
(Though also let’s be real the shootings are just correlated with large dense populations in the current US climate, not if the state is red/blue. So let’s drop the gun law security theatre, there are a million factors that influence gun violence more than restricting the rights of everybody.)
Citation needed because last I checked California’s gun death rate is lower than average.
The topic was mas shootings, not gun deaths. Mass shootings are an extremely small percentage of all firearm deaths. And even that statistic doesn’t matter, because MOST gun deaths aren’t murders, they are suicides or accidents.
Source for mass shootings though since you asked
statista.com/…/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-state/
No, only like Switzerland it is. And there you can’t even buy ammo.
Look up gun laws in Austria, the Czech Republic, etc. Hell when I was in Budapest the military was literally set up in a park giving civilians dry fire training just in the middle of a fair in a park.
You know it can be both right?
No, it cannot. The comment literally said “most significant”. That means 1, not 2.
Then it is still not correct.
How many shootings would happen if everyone was mentally sane? At least some, out of spite or as revenge.
How many shootings would happen if guns didn’t exist? None.
Nobody said anything about guns not existing. Only about gun laws. You can’t regulate guns out of existence, you can make them with parts from a hardware store or a 3D printer. There are literally us government handbooks on how to improvise firearms. The genie is out of the bottle and we will never again be in a world without guns. The only question is if we make the idea of them taboo and illegal for civilians or not. But as history shows over and over, when citizens are disarmed bad things happen.
Curing every single man, woman and child in America of “mental illness”, including people who don’t seek nor want treatment, for no cost, to a level far beyond our current medical knowledge, in less time than it takes to buy a gun and so completely that they will never relapse, all so that the public can be indiscriminately sold semi-automatic weapons without any balancing of risk, is not nearly as reasonable a solution as the pro-gun community pretends it is.
Even if that paradise could be built, it’s not the America that people are living in now where domestic terrorists, armed with semi-automatic weapons and political views functionally identical to most of the pro-gun community, are routinely firing into crowds of people with legal, easily acquired weapons that are perfect for firing into crowds.
So how about this as a compromise: America can adopt strict, risk-based gun laws in line with the rest of the world today to address the maximising of damage that is happening now.
Then, once you’ve finished building your air-tight mental-health-for-all system, you can have your dogshit gun laws back.
You have klan members in Congress, supreme court, churches and every police department, but sure, YT and Reddit are the problem.
Reddit, youtube, and tiktok are quickly becoming the new, “video games cause violence” cry from reactionaries. Hell you see people here claiming tiktok is going to make all the kids have 2 second attention spans. It’s all just scapegoats for other systematic failures in culture, education, and social saftey nets, but those are hard to fix. Easier to just blame the platform and not make any real changes.
it’s not republicans that are suing over this…
Fair enough! I should’ve said, and have corrected it to, reactionaries.
Also I didn’t really mean it in as US centric way hence saying conservatives rather than Republicans. More of the philosophy of conservativism instead of the political oriented conservatives. You know, trying to maintain old institutions at all costs, automatically assuming new institutions are not as good, only finding faults in new methods/institutions while ignoring the faults with the old, etc.
Probably because it’s Republicans making the content and doing the shootings.
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Cool, now do the other 500.
if you want to get technical, most of the 500 “mass shootings” you’re referring too are committed by young black or hispanic men in gangs. Doubt many of those people give two shits who’s sitting in the white house.
You mean like blaming guns?
Not at all like blaming guns. A gun is a tool used to cause death. The other things are all being claimed as vectors to cause someone to use a gun to cause death. If someone didn’t have easy access to a gun it would be much harder to go on a killing spree regardless of how radicalized they are.
sure, like renting a moving truck. or using box cutters to take over an airplane. regardless of how radicalized they are. keep drinking the kool aid.
You come at me with a box cutter and I’ll defend myself with a rifle and let’s see which one is more dangerous.
I’m fine with people renting box trucks and using knives in mass murder attempts, because statistically those attempts are far less successful than those with guns.
Shit one QAnon lunatic tried to ram a hospital ship with a train. Fuck em. Let em fail.
At the very least, they shouldn’t be promoting this content. There’s a difference between hosting content and actively suggesting it to users.
There can be two problems.
The two problems can have disproportionate sizes. Drumming up hysteria about reddit and yt is basically a distraction when you have people in public life endorsing the fringe ideas floating on these platforms.
It’s been the Republican playbook for decades. Get the populace riled up about Satan or Gays or AIDS or now trans people and you can rob them blind while saying it was them.
There can also be two solutions.
Did you want to personally rubber stamp each of them?
Yes.
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They should sue Facebook too. Facebook is rife with Nazis. And they’re fine with it.
Considering the Facebook algorithm will introduce you to neo-nazis, that would actually make sense.
Facebook says this guy’s face is fine: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086229708504&a…
Dude looks like he passed out way too early at a frat party hosted by the Klan.
He’s allowed to be racist, so yeah, it’s fine.
Being a racist piece of shit is not illegal.
Have the been any legal cases on these algorithms?
They are
apnews.com/…/tops-supermarket-mass-shooting-meta-…
Good! They should. Facebook’s algorithm supports Nazis.
I’ll take you at your word.
This is so so stupid. We should also sue the ISPs then, they enabled the use of YouTube and Reddit. And the phone provider for enabling communications. This is such a dangerous slippery slope to put any blame on the platforms.
I think to blame/sue the company that is nearest to the user should work fine. (following is hyperbolical) If you don’t do it that way, then yes it would be slippery because the big bang would need to be sued. But that makes no sense.
So if an attack is planned via mail you think we should sue the postal service? The phone company if it’s done over the phone?
No, because these things should be private. Social media however needs some kind of moderation. edit: also go blame the user too, but that should be a given
I think just the poster should suffice, we should leave the platforms out of it. If anything, it helps to out the assholes who would post stuff that enables this.
Blocking a user and removing content from a platform should be relatively easy and fast which should prevent organized crimes. Sueing someone afterwords takes way more resources and time.
But a platform can remove content without getting sued. Why sue them too? Because if you don’t sue their asses they don’t care.
Of course moderation takes time and can’t be perfect and this should be considered when suing the platform owners. And yes this could help the assholes, but I think you can report such behavior to the fbi or someone.
Change mail (private) to moderated public notice board (not private). The owner of the public notice board should probably be sued for allowing the content to stay up.
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If my buddies and spend a month plotting a crimer in my cousin’s spare room, the cousin would be complicit since he knowingly allowed us to use his property for a criminal conspiracy. The USPS doesn’t know what i am sending in the mail since they are a common carrier.
Great analogy
Actually, they’d just try to seize his house, since proving his complicity is more challenging than proving that the house was used for the planning of a crime.
Is the postal service intentionally increasing mail to people interested in attacks by people messaging that attacks are necessary? If the postal service is doing that to increase the total postal volume, then yes, we should.
I agree that his parents are culpable.
I think the thing isn’t just providing access to the content, but using algorithms to promote how likely it is for deranged people to view more and more content that fuel their motives for hateful acts instead of trying to reduce how often that content is seen, all because they make more money if they watch more content, wether it is harmful or not.
Yeah, the difference is in whether or not the company is choosing what to put in front of a viewer’s eyes.
For the most part an ISP just shows people what they request. If someone gets bomb making directions from YouTube it would be insane to sue AT&T because AT&T delivered the appropriate packets when someone went to YouTube.
On the other end of the spectrum is something like Fox News. They hire every host, give them timeslots, have the opportunity to vet guests, accept advertising money to run against their content, and so on.
Section 512 of the DMCA treats “online service providers” like YouTube and Reddit as if they’re just ISPs, merely hosting content that is generated by users. OTOH, YouTube and Reddit use ML systems to decide what the users are shown. In the case of YouTube, the push to suggest content to users is pretty strong. You could argue they’re much closer to the Fox News side of things than to the ISP side these days. There’s no human making the decisions on what content should be shown, but does that matter?
Yep. I often fall asleep to long YouTube videos that are science or history related. The algorithm is the reason why I wake up at 3am to Joe Rogan. It’s like a terrible autocomplete.
The algorithm is tailored to you. This says more about you. I never get recommended Rogan.
This.
I don’t know about Reddit, but YouTube 100% drives engagement by feeding users increasingly flammable and hateful content.
Hell they’ll even take ad money to promote Jan 6th conspiracies
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and we all know what reddit mods do.
Absolutely. I saw a Google ad the other day from maybe PragerU that was about climate change not being real, while I was searching for an old article that was more optimistic about outcomes. They actually said by the ad that they were showing it as a suggested thing, and thankfully you could report it, which I did immediately. It pissed me off a ton.
A friend recently shared a similar suggested video/ad they got on YouTube, which was saying “Ukrainians are terrorists”. PragerU or TPUSA.
I can see the argument for allowing these ads to exist as a freedom of speech thing, fine. But actively promoting these ads is very different. The lawsuit would have merits on this. I’d prefer if this content was actively minimized, but at the very least it shouldn’t be promoted.
What if it isn’t algorithms but upvotes? What if Lemmy is next?
Then what just give up hold Youtube account for their actions
This comment would have really benefitted from some punctuation
THen why not just give up, and never hold youtube accountable for their actions
So… Punctuation and a few extra words lol
Utilities aren’t the same thing as platforms.
But giant media platforms run by giant tech corportations who have repeatedly shown that they don’t give a shit about people? If they’re not putting railguards on their algorithm and content out of choice and are consequently creating mass murderers, then they should be regulated to have some railguards.
No corporation has proven that it will make the best choices for society, it’s up to people to force them to.
the isps don't encourage people to see content that makes them mad
If you were head of a psychiatric ward and had an employee you knew was telling patients “Boy, I sure wish someone would kill as many black people as they could”, you would absolutely share responsibility when on of them did exactly that.
If you were deliberately pairing that employee with patients who had shown violent behaviour on the basis of “they both seem to like violence”, you would absolutely share responsibility for that violence.
This isn’t a matter of “there’s just so much content, however can we check it all?”.
Reddit has hosted multiple extremist and dangerous communities, claiming “we’re just the platform!” while handing over the very predictable post histories of mass shooters week after week.
YouTube has built an algorithm and monetisation system that is deliberately designed to lure people down rabbit holes then done nothing to stop it luring people towards domestic terrorism.
It’s a lawsuit against companies worth billions. They’re not being executed. There are grounds to accuse them of knowingly profiting from the grooming of terrorists and if they want to prove that’s not the case, they can do it in court.
Do ISPs actively encourage you to watch extremist content? Do they push that content toward people who are at risk of radicalization to get extra money?
Blame everything but the shooter great
Nah, this is in addition to. No one is saying the shooter was faultless, so stop pretending anyone said that.
Seems like an overreaction to me.
I am all for this
🤔 so if gun violence is a problem… and they’ve already banned violence… what if one would ban the other thing - oh wait no it’s definitely the goofy gamer machinimas 🤭 stop giggling y’all, this is serious. you don’t wanna turn into criminals
They banned violence. Clearly banning things is effective. It worked when they banned drugs. And 100 years ago when they banned alcohol. And there’s definitely no sex workers because prostitution is banned.
Bad news…tons of people want to ban guns thinking it’ll stop the violence…
People want to regulate guns, not ban them. If a supply is reduced and people lock up the guns they do have rather than leaving them to be easily stolen, they’re less likely to be used in violence. That means when people are violent, they’re more likely to use a knife or other weapon that’s more convenient to access. When a knife is used, it’s highly unlikely that bystanders will also be killed. Also, it’s less likely that the victim themselves will die. And if you think you don’t care about the life of another person involved in violence, think selfishly about the cost that you’re paying in hospital costs and medical insurance to treat gun woulds of the people who die and can’t pay their bill which cost way, way more to treat than knife wounds. Not to mention that if you care at all about the lives of cops, you’ll realize that cops are usually the bystanders that get killed by the guns being used in violent acts.
The only guns that people want to ban are offensive weapons of war. The only thing they can do with that is commit terrorism.
That’s some bullshit. The end goal is complete disarming of the public. Stop fooling yourself.
Straw purchases are how the majority of firearms used in crime are obtained, not from theft.
Yes tell that to all the people who are killed by knives. Which is 3xs higher than all rifles combined. Which you clearly want to ban…that black plastic rifle you think is a weapon of war, kills around 50-100 people a year. Hands and feet kill 2xs all rifles combined and about 15xs more than the AR-15 yearly.
This is just nonsense…see above.
First, I’m all for single payer healthcare, secondly, cops kill on average around 1k Americans a year…yea… I’m not worried about the boots…
Lol handguns are used in 95% of all gun violence…and it’s like 99% of all suicides. That black scary rifle is a rounding error on firearm deaths…and it’s not a weapon of war, it’s a semi-auto rifle dressed up in plastic…the military wouldn’t be caught dead with one of them.
You totally missed every point I made and replied with, no they’re not rather than offering any evidence. Show me that the majority are pushing to ban all guns 100%. Straw purchases are already illegal but unenforced, can’t do much when cops refuse to do their job. I didn’t say people don’t die from knives, but a stab isn’t going to kill a random person on the street accidentally like a stray bullet. And there’s a huge difference between a knife wound and a bullet wound that makes it much easier to treat. And the knife doesn’t break apart, shredding nearby organs, rarely breaks larger bones, or in the case of supersonic rounds from the mentioned weapons of war, cause compression shockwaves that pulverize organs. If you haven’t spent time in combat or an ER or around gunshot wounds, you have no idea. I’ve seen organ soup after a close range stomach wound from a high powered rifle. And I don’t care that handguns are the most common. They’re also the most commonly used for defense. It’s the high powered ruffles that liquify your organs when used in drive-by shootings that have no reason to be in the hands of civilians in the first place.
If you’re going to argue for a cause, then at least know what the people on the other side are saying. Quit making up straw men and arguing slippery slope nonsense.
Noone is saying ban guns. People are saying we should have more thorough background checks, mandatory training, and close gun show loop holes. No, banning things doesn’t completely solve the issue. But putting obstacles in the way generally stop most crimes. Of course there will still be people who go above and beyond to commit a crime, but with the number of shootings drastically lowered you can start to address the rest more easily.
Yet somehow, the bans on hand grenades, landmines and giant bags of anfo have worked. It’s almost like it’s easier to control the production of weapons and dangerous goods than plants and sex.
Gun control works the world over.
I don’t think I mentioned guns at all. If you assume banning guns would be equally ineffective I can’t say I disagree, but that’s a conclusion you came to.
ANFO isn’t banned, people use it all the time.
I am using the pro-gun community definition of the word “banned” that means “not actually banned, just regulated”.
You can also buy hand grenades with the appropriate permits and background checks. You know, just like guns in almost every other country where the pro-gun community insists they’re “banned”.
Why don’t you walk us through the process of legally acquiring a handgun in the U.K.?
Why don’t you walk us through the process of legally acquiring a brand new, new full-auto rifle in America?
You can’t? Oh shit, guns must be banned in America.
The reality is that before you started your little pro-gun death cult, America routinely made risk vs reward judgements on firearms, no different than the UK did when they decided the murder weapon of choice for criminals and men who can’t control their emotions doesn’t have a place in modern society.
Anyway, talk next time there’s horrific violence that makes international headlines. Do you think it’s going to be from America or the UK?
Machine guns are legal in only 37 states. You can’t get a machine gun quickly or cheaply, but it isn’t difficult.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Can’t buy them at a corner store? Banned.
Can’t argue with that
So you would legalize kiddie porn because it still exists?
No I’d kill the people that made it. There’s a difference.
Yeah but you’re pro-gun, so it’s not surprising that you’re always on the look out for someone you can get away with murdering.
Ever wonder why no one is walking about with their own personal bazooka?
Are you suggesting “banning guns”? If so, genuine curiosity, how would you go about doing it?
The same way we banned private ownership of nuclear missiles.
Yeah that was crazy when they had to go around and confiscate all those nuclear missiles from millions of American households.
God, please don’t give the GOP any ideas, the last thing we need is nuclear proliferation among Trumpers.
splcenter.org/…/slain-neo-nazi-angry-over-obama-v…
Could ask Australia
I guess a good start would be document gun holders digitally and not on a pile of paper where nobody finds anything and has water damage. Another approach would be not having guns sold in the supermarket. Furthermore, you could ban ads for guns and make it very hard to buy heavy stuff used only in war zone. And lastly restrict who and how weapons are allowed to be transported on man. Of course, one has to have a valid reason to have a weapon on them. Going shopping with a gun out of fear is mot a reason.
First we have to stop bringing new weapons to people, than we can think about collecting
I’m Swiss, we have nearly as many private weapons per household as Americans have, but we have way less shootings, all the things above apply here and I think it kinda works.
TIL they show ads for guns. What exactly do they advertise?
Well that is one thing I’m not 100% sure, but NRA 100% does political pro gun ads on TV (and most likely precisely targeted in social media) I just assumed there are normal gun ads since, well, it’s America.
youtu.be/ks2_wY7f-MM?si=SWzCvmHLKdys7jFt
Just skipped through that and it seems most tv networks refuse gun ads, but it seems not illegal by law to show gun ads on tv.
Nearly all of your suggestions are already part of New York state law.
Exceptions:
No registration required for non-“assault weapon” long guns.
Open carry in New York is not legal. Concealed carry requires a license. I believe that requiring a reason to carry for obtaining a license to carry was recently ruled unconstitutional. I don’t know whether you can legally require a reason for the act of carrying the gun.
It seems like New York goes in the right direction then, nice to see! I bet one sees the difference in the statistics for gun violence compared to other states of America. Umm, is NY a state or a city or both? 😂 not so sure right now
Both.
New York state’s murder rate and firearm murder rate both rank in the second quartile.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta…
If you order by “Murder Rate (per 100,000) (2019)”
Do the states with less murders per 100,000 than New York have more strict gun rules? (In case you happen to know that)
Everytown only ranks California higher than New York.
everytownresearch.org/rankings/
This is an overview of gun laws in different states:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_…
Everytownresearch.org looks like a really great resource! 😃thank you very much for that. So as it looks like, gun laws aren’t the only thing that influence gun violence. But if you ignore the statistical outliers then you see the correlation.
Everytown is a gun control advocacy group. The purpose of the website is to persuade people that 1) gun control works, and 2) there is a need for more gun control. Keep that bias in mind, because their analysis of gun violence is one dimensional. That occasionally results in some conjectures about gun violence that don’t make sense.
In the first scenario, strong gun laws don’t result in lower levels of gun violence because people can buy a gun in a neighboring state with weaker gun control laws. That explanation is plausible.
In the second scenario, strong gun laws in neighboring states result in lower levels of gun violence in the given states with weak gun laws because…?
Oh dear 😅 you got me here
I agree, having strong gun law in states around leading to weaker gun violence makes not so much sense. I would guess those states have ether a less dense population or have a historical culture (like an unwritten law in some sort) which prevents gun violence for some extent.
They happen to have very low poverty rates.
I see 😄 I guess that explains a lot
So the plan should be to make the Poverty gap smaller as well as having some good gun laws.
Hope they’ll do it 🤞🏻
I would copy-paste what already worked in Australia, which used to have similar gun rights: www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0aGGOK4kAM
Or, I don’t know, ban guns.
As a European, it’s amazing to see how many (probably) US citizens cling to their guns and downvote every single comment suggesting it might make sense to ban them. Like, dude, what do you need a glock for? Like seriously?
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Everyone was responsible except the shooter. Welcome to Lawyer World.
Liability is nuanced, ya doughnut.
It’s almost like the world exists outside of a third grade understanding man woman toaster TV.
And there is no liability here, ya bagel
There is tho.
It’s obviously not the shooter’s fault. The gun is 100% responsible.
Shootings do not happen in a vacuum. They happen due to external factors such as political or religious radicalization or “just” bullying. This does not absolve the shooter of the responsibility of course since the response to, let’s say, the Great Replacement Theory lies in the hands of the shooter. The shooter could have not shot non-white people.
But then we have the people spreading the Great Replacement Theory. The people that tell their audience day in and day out that if they are not careful, there may be no whites anymore. If you keep hearing this or other racist shit day in and day out for many many many years and do not trust another source of information because the same people tell you that the other media is corrupt… You’re bound to turn “crazy” one way or another.
There’s probably even more nuance but my point is: We really shouldn’t let the people turning responsible gun owners into shooters through propaganda just get away with it, should we?
Especially in the right wing where this is a known tactic. They radicalize people and if something goes awry, they just disavow it. The right wing pundits disavowed the Jan 6 rioters they themselves “inspired” to fight for democracy. They disavowed the Club Q shooter they themselves “warned” about trans people.
If youtube is still pushing racist and alt right content on to people, then they can get fucked. Why should we let some recommender system controlled by a private corporation have this much influence American culture and politics??
I sub to primarily leftist content and their YouTube shorts algorithm insists on recommending the most vile far right content on the planet. It is to the point that I’m convinced YouTube is intentionally trying to shift people far right
This is happening on my FB video feed. I watch a funny chick called Charlotte Dobre and she does funny reaction videos. I honestly love her, but all my algorithm shows me for recommendations are these cop brutality videos with comments praising the cops, and right wing crap that praises Abbotts wall and desantis dictatorship. It drives me nuts, and no matter howany pages I block I always get more right wing recommended crap videos
I primarily watch woodworking or baking content on Youtube. I feel like the far right content is super prevalent with Shorts. I’ll watch something like a quick tool review, and the next video will be someone asking folks on the street if it’s ok to be white. What color you are isn’t your decision, but what you do every day is, and being some dumbass white kid accosting black tourists in Times Square for shitty reaction content is just gross.
It doesn’t matter how often I say I dislike the content, block channels or whatever, Youtube has just decided it’s going to check in from time to time and see if I want to let loose my inner Boomer and rage with Rogan.
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Wow I am so surprised by this. I watch mainly tech and gardening YouTube and my shorts have been extremely applicable to me.
Even when I use a new computer like at work the shorts are mostly pop culture.
Didn’t make shorts any less annoying though
It could be that pushing videos on the other side of the political spectrum gets interactions in the form of people sharing/commenting on it. Even if you disagree, going “Why does YouTube recommend this, this is awful” is still a share.
The algorithm prioritises interactions above all else, and fewer things get people interacting more than being wrong, or them disagreeing vehemently.
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I literally only get Marvel Snap/general gaming, College Humor, tech, educational, stand up comedy, and drones. That’s it. I don’t mean to victim blame, but it learns what you click and what you stay to watch.
I am pretty sure it is just showing politically charged content based on people watching other politically charged content. I feel the blame is misdirected at something that only provides content people will like based on their past.
Mine acted similar to yours. I recently started watching a few more short videos and now it’s showing me an unfortunate amount of that far right nonsense.
Depends entirely on what you’re subscribed to, if you have multiple linked youtube accounts (such as the premium family plan) it depends on what THEY’RE subscribed to, and depends on location (my recommendations at home and my recommendations at work are wildly different)
I recently started to get a few right wing channels starting to show up but I promptly clicked not interested and blocked them with a Firefox extension
If you ever go on YouTube not logged into your account (or in a provate browser), the default stuff on the homepage are: one lo-fi stream, Mr. Beast latest video, and the rest is all right wing feaemonger stuff.
I wonder if this differs from country to country? Or is it different in Europe vs US? I get maths, engineering, music. Nothing too awful. But there is clearly a fully conscious and malicious push to the right going on on all large platforms. It seems Europe is trying to step in and limit that shit from big US platforms before it’s too late. Then we have censorship looming on the other side of the picture.
I’m in UK and I often get YouTube shorts made by/for US alt right. These include Ben Shapiro, Tucker, Tate and Jordan Peterson - also people complaining about Bud Light. I always dislike this content and alot of the Tate stuff needs reporting.
I’m left wing and very rarely get left wing content. I don’t remember ever being shown any extreme left wing content.
The left wing UK content I get is MPs is Westminster’s making speeches, the UK right wing content is manufactured publicity made by the Tories.
Additionally being in Scotland and liking music seems to cause Google to serve you YouTube shorts of Scottish marching bands. Google doesn’t seem to realise flute (not traditional bagpipe/kilt bands) in Scotland are mostly hate groups. These orange bands are the group that became the KKK in America. They just aren’t recognised as a hate group in the UK because they support monarchy, unionism and are actively courted/involved with both Tories and Labour. Despite playing music encouraging the death of other religious groups and using their marches as intimidation.
True that. I also never see anything really left wing. But then I really try to avoid political stuff on Youtube. I don’t want to see video content that makes me angry.
I’ve noticed that my punk music recommendations always seem to quickly get politically innocuous. It’s like the punk always gets gradually filtered out of my recommendations again, while the math, jazz, world music, metal, botany, craft, etc. remains.
I never really take the effort to dislike anything. Not giving it any time or effort maybe makes a difference? Interesting fact about the Scottish marching bands. Makes me concerned that as a person obsessed with international folk music I might accidentally like something nationalistic. Especially in the Balkans it quickly gets complicated and genocide-y.
Oooh be careful or you’re gonna get the Free Speech Absolutist liberals mad at you. Instead of blocking the offensive content, you just need to “win them over with better ideas.”
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Youtube needs to be punished for their hypocrisy.
Average Joe gets a community guidelines strike for “promoting violence” because he said “Dead” instead of “Unalived”, but Penis Prager can advocate for beating your gay kids till they turn straight and YouTube just throws it into everyone’s playlists without so much as a “Boys will be boys”
I see you’re a person of culture as well… I know this reference.
Who is going to punish them? The leaders who agree with Prager that you can beat the gay out of your kids aren’t gonna get behind that.
A significant portion of our population is hoping for a way to degay their kids.
Man, I’m gonna be all doom and gloom when I go back to bed here in a few.
For me, it seems hopeless. We’ll all be further radicalized by the thing that I thought for most of my life would bring salvation, our access to the Library of Shitexander. A big old library filled with information, Ricky. Information on the workings of electricity. Information on the life and work of Isaac Newton. Information on how to cannibalize your neighbor. Information on how some grifter talks to god and knows exactly what he wants. We can learn useful skills like, how to hate black people and why we should. We can learn how to kickoff Armageddon, and why nuclear weapons are biblical and mutually assured destruction isn’t only a good thing, it’s what we should strive for.
And because we humans create information, we have arguments about who should decide what kind of information is available. Free speech absolutists will say that anything goes and is fair game. Others will say that some speech is dangerous because it influences hatred and bigotry. Each group has representation and has to compromise in order to keep things from escalating, oh but compromise might escalate things too.
Our species was born from chaos looking for a leader who didn’t exist.
I’m just gonna ride the rock until I’m not riding it any more and hope the people of the future don’t destroy each other and can someday figure out that that god ain’t coming back. What else can we do?
You guys have a good morning. I’m heading back to bed.
When I was radicalized I learned how to ride my bike with no handlebars
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Jesus dude, you gave me an existential crisis.
Just ride the rock bud. We’re at least lucky enough to live in a time and place where we can play video games and eat pizza.
I spend too much time listening to and reading about the history of conflict and cults. It’s hard for me to have hope when I see the same thing happening over and over again for thousands of years.
I don’t need hope though because I’m an idiot who can’t change anything.
Good, smart people are out there working for change, seriously working. Maybe they’ll keep things together for a long time.
Maybe you can be one of them.
If not, just ride the rock and enjoy the things you enjoy. Nothing wrong with that.
I’m sorry I put my gloom on you.
Yea no man, you’re absolutely right
Personally I think everybody should shut the fuck up permanently.
There is a good reason for that, and that is that Penis Prager is a bigger payoff for Google.
yeah but the hypocrisy is so blatant
They blamed books for copy cat killers, movies and video games for shootings now they want to blame websites…
now they are trying to sue people because of hindsight? this isn’t Minority Report. this is ‘lets throw allot of torts and other legal bs on the wall and pray something sticks’
Making legal precedent so that they AVOID showing the offending content instead of PROMOTING the offending content is probably the goal
About 30-40 times a day, Youtube shorts shows me videos actively advocating violence, and I know for sure that Google has enough money and resources currently to prevent these videos being shown, considering it AUTOMATICALLY SUBTITLES THEM
I had to manually report a 100k views short showing someone killing a snail with an air gun. It got removed almost instantly.
Sure, it’s a snail, and sure, it’s an air gun, but exactly this type of videos are breeding grounds for sickos. And no YouTube, the 1mil sub Minecraft channel that said “kill a creep” is not really violent, neither is some who says “fuck” in the first 30 seconds.
Gosh I hate the platform.
I’m guessing you’re algorithms from search results generate that content cuz I never see this kind of stuff
I’m a lefty tree hugger who subscribes to frugal living and DIY home maintenance channels… I get right wing Jordan Peterson/ Joe Rogan bullshit in my feed every time I log on.
I actively click not interested…it still comes. I clear my browser history often, it still comes.
You should pause your watch history altogether if you’re getting this kinda shit. Youtube has stopped recommend anything to people altogether who have completely paused their watch history.
How bout instead YT take the fuckong hint when we click “I am not interested in this”? How bout that? Why does a feature which some of us are paying for have to be disabled because YT can’t write a version of their simple algorithm that takes hints?
Your “lefty” content prompts the algorithm to show you opposing content, which is literally what people are clamoring for, because odds are high that you will engage with it, and engagement is the only thing it looks for.
If you only liked Trump shit it’d show you a minority of left-leaning content as well.
I have been telling youtube im not interested in Joe Rogan for years. It still gives me joe rogan youtube shorts
Doesn’t help that everyone and their mother has a channel that only shows Joe Rogan clips. I don’t even like this shit YouTube, why can I recognize it from the fucking microphone.
You probably has some Joe Rogan video in your watch history.
Even hovering over those shorts can get them added on there for some dumb reason.
Go purge your history and see how much it improves.
hmm, I have watch history off. Is that why it keeps suggesting him so much? Im getting the ‘defaults’?
Yes
Why do you people insist on this conspiracy theory where you blame the person because you think they are lying? Fuck off. Google’s algorithm is malicious.
Yeah, I am getting pretty real tired of that excuse. It takes active vigilance to try to teach the algorithm that no, I am not a christofascist incel “pAtRiOt” and I do not want those fuckers in my feed
did I say you were a liar? Christ… I don’t get this shit in my feed, that’s my reality
It’s not a conspiracy theory to assume and algorithm takes what you watch and are interested in into account. That’s what it does.
It is a conspiracy theory, and an easily disproven one, to suggest the algorithm forces this content on you.
What are you searching for that YouTube shorts shows you this?
Dont need to look at a lot, if you remember 2015 youtube suggestions youve got a pretty good idea of how bad the shorts algorithm is. I dont personally use them bur my friend does.
You don’t generally search with YouTube shorts, it presents you with content About 20% is YOUR recommendations (channels you subscribe to) 20% is near-interests (people who do similar content) 20% is whatever is popular at the moment, or whatever a la carte foreign language/low effort content (garena free fire, fortnite) it wants to give you 20% is locational (at home I get anime recommendations due to housemate, at work I get Vegas/Disney vacation or AI garbage) 20% is whatever the algorithm is pushing (channels I have BLOCKED but still appear, tiktok exiles, cooking videos)
I dont even use youtube anymore, i just use freetube and select the content i wanna watch by myself. Private frontends are the best. No spyware or bloated webpages or anti-adblock. Freetube even has support for external media players like mpv and vlc and smplayer and others. It even has optional tor and invidious support. Sponsorblock and Dearrow support as well.
If you look at anything even remotely related to “men’s interests” YouTube will begin showing you alt right fascist bull shit.
Seriously. I spend a little too much time watching a short that is clearly designed to get me worked up about stereotypical communication difficulties between men & women from a “women, am I rite?” perspective, suddenly I’m getting Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. I spend a little too much time watching a video about certain Ukrainian war equipment or a Slo Mo Guys video involving guns (wood stock hunting guns, I felt like it was the early 80s all over again before everyone decided they needed assault weapons), suddenly I’m getting served tacticool idiots with kitted-out murder machines. Or I watch a Bart Erhman video (secular New Testament scholar with a large lay audience) and suddenly I get served muslim da’wah/apologetics videos and Catholic catechism ads.
Lots of stupid, emotionally driven teenagers on the platform who think their opinion is reality, so you have a lot of Tate/Peterson/Rogan riders on the platform. Add in the fact ‘controversial’ (blatantly wrong or insane) content gets lots of comments/engagement, so it is pushed by the algorithm. Then there are just lots of idiots in general who don’t want to consider self-reflection or change their vies, so they will eat up all the ideology that shifts the blame or gives them a chance to ‘get to the top.’ They are victims of modern society. But somehow see every ‘problem’ except for the real one, the one of neoliberal ideologies around capitalism and individualism.
I just wish that I could watch (intentionally or accidentally) a slightly hot-take video once in a blue moon without the algorithm deciding I’m a right-wing nutjob that only wants right-wing nutjob content. How hard would it be to allow users to give active input on what they’re getting? Right now, anything I do (downvoting, “don’t recommend this channel”, reporting hate speech) gives me MORE of the shit I hate.
I watch a lot of model trains stuff, I don’t get alt-right fascist stuff. At worst I get shit like ShoeOnHead who seems reasonable enough.
She is an anti-feminist and basically alt right entry point.
No? Have you ever watched her, or did you just see out of context clips?
Unless by antifeminist and alt right, you mean disagree with stalin, and isnt a women supremacist.
Guessing from the witch in your username, you’re just upset shes doesn’t think women are superior.
Or if you don’t. Youtube shorts recommends Rogan constantly.
Feels good to be reading this somewhere other than reddit
Riiight blame youtube and reddit. First music then videogames now youtube and reddit?
The difference between reddit/youtube and a video game is that a video game doesn’t have an algorithm that creates an echo chamber.
Social Medias want clicks, so they create echo chambers. Go watch one alt right video on YouTube and you will see them pop in your feeds
How far do you go, do you blame what he ate that day or lack of and was hangery? Just cause you get served videos from whatever source that doesn’t change it from just being what it is, information. If a psycho decides to do something with that information, he’s a psycho criminal. This is perfect to continue further censorship. Getting rid of echo chambers is impossible unless they get rid of the algos all together and people go back to building their own rss feeds but thats not gonna happen and even if all you craft is the same echo chamber what changes, nothing still a psycho. Hard to rationalize the irrational.
I’m torn, on one hand, you are right. On the other, I will say that while we disagreed, my extended family used to get along. Enough time with social media and there’s basically people that can’t stand to talk to each other at all, let alone be in the same room. Folks that grew up together, spent decades hanging out. Same thing for a friend of mine that had been a friend for over a decade. Went down a rabbit hole and frothing at the mouth rage with all sorts of extremist talking points.
While direct responsibility is certainly tricky, social networks have allowed people’s worst inclinations to fester. The neat tendency for them to group “like-minded” folks together while guarding them from “unlike-minded” has really caused deep societal problems.
It’s a simple matter of normalizing.
If it was simply serving videos, that would be fine.
The problem here is that the platform is trying to give you certain types of videos.
Even more than that: even though you try to avoid certain types of contents, youtube for example, will still give you that content.
And thats where the problem is. Because that content is often alt right speaking points that get served to you even though you don’t want it.
That’s the difference between a video game and a social media.
Don’t blame youtube and reddit directly.
But do blame their algorithms that fuel the fires for engagement.
I blame the shooter. Motives are motives but he still pulls the trigger.
I think no one holds the shooter blameless, but that’s of more limited value. It’s straightforward to keep the shooter from doing further harm. More complicated is the task of mitigating the chances of radicalization leading to more spree shootings.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to involve limiting speech, but it does suggest that a social media feed really needs to mix it up and avoid a feedback loop of one sided thought and rage.
What if someone had repeatedly told him to do it? Wouldn’t that person also be to blame?
Algorithms show you what you want. That’s literally what they’re designed to do. There is no difference between your algorithm and the shooter’s, or mine and the shooter’s, and I see 0 of the content he saw.
They are designed to filter out everything but what you interact with the most, and what you interact with the most is going to become skewed as it becomes a closed feedback loop, or a spiral if you will. Over many iterations, what it thinks you want shapes what you think you want.
It will also see what others who want what you want want, and serve you suggestions based on that. Likewise, it will serve what you want to others who want what you want.
At some point it becomes a self-feeding echo chamber, and that is exactly what we see happening.
What if I told you that you can search for and watch videos that aren’t part of your current algorithm, and also that’s how most people interact with the service
Can’t help but feel like the last two have the lions share of the responsibility here… Especially the last one. If your kid goes on a killing spree, you did a fucking shit job of parenting.
Hell no, algorithms constantly pushing rage, lies, and instigating violence are causing immense harm all over the world. It’s about time tech giants paid for their disgusting algorithms constantly radicalizing the terminally online.
I don’t disagree completely. With YouTube, I’ve seen people go from normal people that you can have interesting conversations with, to doubting Covid existing, to having opinions about Hunter Biden and thinking Russia was right to invade Ukraine. Scary to see people go down hill like that, and not stupid people either. Anyone can fall victim to this.
But Reddit? It lets you find bubbles of racists and incels, sure, but it’s not doing the algorithm dance like YouTube does. It’s going to be a thin argument for a court case.
The hate was there way before the social media giants, they just group it all together in echo chambers. Before that we had IRC and normies had TV and tabloid newspapers. The hate will still be there when the last gen Z-er turns off TikTok for the last time. Not sure there’s any solution for it. Reduce inequality so people don’t feel constantly like they’ve got a fucked up life and it’s somebody else’s fault? Maybe don’t let kids who aren’t even old enough to drink have guns? Mental health awareness? But none of these are as enticing as “foreigners stole your jobs!”
Having hateful thoughts in your head and having hateful rhetoric spoonfed to you are 2 different things. There’s a reason why there is a surge in hate crimes and far-right rhetoric all over the world. It’s not a coincidence that it happened at the same time big tech gained full control of pretty much everyone’s information sources. IRC is not even remotely commonplace, TV print and radio don’t allow genocidal losers to spread their ideas since they can’t just make an account and post garbage.
As for reddit, how were they able to ban “watchpeopledie” and heavily censor the piracy subreddit? They 100% are responsible for not policing hate subs and allowing them to be easily accessible, they are also using an algorithm (that’s not as “polished” as YouTube’s but still exists and will most likely get worse as they cement full control over their platform’s users).
The solution is to induce financial penalty on these companies that makes it more expensive than the ad revenue they receive from such shitty algorithms. Which is exactly how the piracy subreddit was gutted so much, reddit risks financial harm from legal battles for hosting that content. It is not much different to do the same for hateful rhetoric advocating for murder.
There will always be somebody spoonfeeding it, because there will always be people who want to hear it. From Oswald Mosely, through The Daily Mail, Fox News, hate preachers of all denominations… Often for the same pure simple profit that the social media giants are after rather than ideological hatred.
I’d love to see social media destroyed because it contributes literally nothing to society and makes it worse, but I don’t believe for a second that a US court would hand down a fine that would be more than the cost of actually policing their own platform. I’m not sure any political party would try to make them, because it’s quite apparent that social media platforms have enough sway to throw elections one way or the other. Especially in the US where it hangs on a knife edge anyway. I also don’t think reddit is remotely mainstream enough swing global opinions to the right. That’s the domain of Facebook and Twitter.
Again, not as far reaching, effective, or insidious. Fox news also had to pay dominion voting systems for lying and spreading election fraud propaganda.
Highly doubtful
This is a civil suit
So? It’s one of many pieces, not the only piece. It’s also the largest site of its kind.
Funding proper education for every citizen would be a good start.
This is “video games cause school shootings” with extra steps
Parents are a funny one… At a point I really don’t think you have control of your kid… they become their own person and their friends play a major influence in their life.
If they have good friends that are better than the parents that can be a good thing.
If they have bad friends that are worse than the parents, well that’s a bad thing.
You can say “well they never should’ve let them associate with those friends!” but I’m immediately suspicious of easy answers, and that’s as easy of an answer as they come.
I think a lot of us saw this in our teen years if we’re being honest. We typically tell ourselves stories that make only the good things cases of “self development” (oh that kid is so much better than his parents) but I’m sure it happens the other way. I don’t think all evil people can be blamed on evil (or even bad) parents (which is terrifying if you think about it).
One of the top subs on Reddit is literally called “master race” but if you call them out on it they say “it’s just a joke”.
im not particularly convinced that the shooter was acting in name of a pc gaming fan club
Don’t you know? PC stand for ‘People of non Color’ so r/pcmasterrace is super racist.
Well it is a meme stemming from a Zero Punctuation video on The Escapist’s YouTube Channel.
I don’t think it has anything to do with actual racism.
This lawsuite is ridiculous. You should hold the shooter liable for there actions. Not reddit, the gun shop or anyone else.
How’s that been working out?
Not well with silly lawsuites like these.
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You can however, blame the policies that helped turn the shooter into what he is.
Like an actual common sense gun law that doesn’t sell guns to mentally ill people.
If the gun shop knew he was I’ll they wouldn’t of sold him the gun
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Is that how you tell if someone is mentally ill? Just sell them a gun and see if they take it?
You don’t that’s why its silly they are liable
Yeah, we need to implement some kind of system that stores mentally ill people! And then make gun shops call them before every sale!
Oh, god, please, yes!!! Turn all gun shops into honey pots—folks can really run with this idea.
Much as I dislike Reddit, I dont think they are to blame here
TD literally was a breeding ground for incel hardcore altright racists and nothing was done about it.
What’s TD?
The donald. The breeding ground for the disgusting republicans we have now.
It was more like a localized colony or infestation. The NRA, the Church, and FOX are the mother hives. You’ve got to get the nest, otherwise you’ll be running around stomping them out everywhere without ever getting rid of them.
Reddit.com/r/The_Donald
Otherwise known as the front page of reddit for the entirety of the 2016 presidential election. Every single post on /r/all was either pro Trump stuff from The_Donald or pro Hilary stuff from /r/Politics. As a non american, it made using Reddit painful, being constantly bombarded with stuff about the election.
Wasn’t it banned? That feels like more than “nothing”
Yes. In 2020. After raiding other subs.
Not because they broke any laws or were racist. Just TOS shit.
If you then claim that reddit did anything to combat the alttight uprising i have a bridge to sell you.
I think they tried to allow for almost any uprising on every side. It’s good for business. And what’s good for business is good for their Chinese investors.
they were rathe eager to police any leftist content, even if it was clearly satirical
To be fair, it took waaay too long for anything to be done about it. I feel like they kept it going for so long because it was drawing people to Reddit and improving engagement etc. Even when they did step in, they just quarantined the subreddit.
Reddit worked very hard to protect all anti-nazi imagery and stop people from posting anti-nazi sentiment. I’d like for someone to acknowledge that they silence anyone who posts anti-nazi shit and who speaks about killing Nazis.
Many are here because of that.
Got banned for posting anti-nazi memes comparing 45 and his supporters to Hitlet and his. It gets scary drawing parallels between the beer hall putsch and jan. 6…
Nothing like a drunk angry mob when you stage failed coups!
It could be the killing part not the nazi part that they silenced you.
As if killing people is some ultimate evil? WW2 literally happened with the purpose of stopping the Nazis, and the only way was killing them due to their ideology requiring force.
People die every day for no reason, some suffer their entire lives’, some people die due to indirect/direct consequences of greed by corporations. The US has killed millions through geopolitical interference. Yet killing somebody who would have ‘unideal races’ genocided is too far? Sure. As if liberals aren’t ok with killing people as long as they agree with the perpetrator.
Fucking ridiculous. If people feel so strongly to publicly announce wanting to kill you, they are either insane, or you are fucked up. And in this case, I think we know the answer.
They also censor content that is just outspoken again nazism and linking the current fascism in the american right to the fascists in history. Meanwhile on /r/conservative fake news and conspiracy theories about the election, the raid on Mar a Lago, racist conspiracies around BLM and violence from cops, and every other topic of republicans and democrats is a okay for reddit
That’s their claim, but it’s not like I’m advocating killing a person or anything of value. I’m advocating to kill a Nazi. That’s just being an American Citizen.
Reddit is seriously dogshit. Shitty admins, shitty users and shitty investor interests ruined the site completely. The platform will never turn back. It’s gone fully into the hive-mind/censorship direction, likely because it keeps people on the site and maximises revenue.
They kept the_donald around for years after they helped organize a nazi rally.
Reddit has edited content, that IMO opens them up this. Once they start removing legal but undesirable content they are tacitly approving the content they haven’t removed.
Sure the parents who are truly to blame for not raising their child properly
The parents often believe the same way and teach the racism
I mean lookingbat the details for the basis of the suit. They think they can sue someone for teaching a criminal how to do something. They think they can sue the makers of body armor for selling a guy who was not a criminal at the time of purchase, an unregulated commercial product. They think they can sue YouTube for providing motive for whatever he did.
In the law world theres a word for this. Its called a shakedown. This is grieving family’s who are vindictive. They dont care who pays, but somebody has to pay in their eyes. Sadly on the merits this case will die in court pretty fast and nobody is gonna see a dollar unless alphabet and spez’s lawyers decide they are feeling charitable. Which they won’t because settling would cause implications of guilt in the public eye.
Former Australian Deputy Premier won a case against Google in 2022 arguing that the YouTube platform enabled journalist FriendlyJordies to make fun of him, and he won a $715,000 settlement.
Edit: Thanks for the correction, guys
theguardian.com/…/google-ordered-to-pay-john-bari…
715 thousand. Not millions
Changed it. What’s a zero here or a zero there between politicians though…
True
Also, not a former Australian prime minister. He was the deputy premier of New South Wales.
I’m still learning Australian political terminology, you are right, I had prime minister and deputy premier confused.
FYI, the premier is like the state governor and the prime minister is like the president.
YouTube may end up being protected by Safe Harbor laws:
theguardian.com/…/powerful-us-laws-could-shield-g…
nailed it
How is this a “shakedown”?
They literally explained why it was a shakedown. I don’t know what else needs to be said.
The parents of the victims are suing organizations that have no chance of being held liable in the hopes that they get some form of payout. That’s what a shakedown is.
It’s tragic and I get their anger, but this isn’t going to succeed. Any legal team worth its retainer fee will successfully defend this.
There’s no blackmail or extortion of money, it’s a litigation suit on companies to be held liable. That’s not defined as a shakedown.
The term “shakedown” has been used to describe frivolous lawsuits seeking to strong-arm settlements from defendants for decades. Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
I don’t think that ordinary non-billionaire humans suing Google is strong-arming by any sense of the imagination. Google has the deep pockets and the top legal team. Google could invent lawsuits about whatever the fuck it wanted to and destroy each and every one of these people until the end of time. PR is the only reason they don’t. Not fear of court imposed sanctions—they’re too slick for that.
Only part I disagree with. It’s a very good thing that this case dies in court. It really does suck for the families, sure, but if these kinds of lawsuits worked it would cause a whole lot more problems than it solves.
I’d blame it on the lawyers.
The family’s lawyer is getting paid either way.
Yeah some families are vindictive but ALL lawyers are ready to press a case like this as long as they think they can win.
If they think they can win it’s another matter, what I think is happening here is the lawyer is pushing for the case regardless, because they get paid regardless.
I’m not sure that’s true. Families don’t always have deep pockets. The lawyer is paid a % of the settlement, which is probably more money than the family could just pay out of pocket. But it does mean they need to win, so they pick their cases. I mean if you pay them well in cash they’ll likely take any case. But a lot of personal injury cases and such are paid on a percentage.
Not necessarily, if that was the case I would expect it to be very likely they would win - a lawyer isn’t going to take a case on contingency if they don’t think they will win. More likely the family have a little bit of money saved up and the lawyer is taking advantage of them in their emotional state by encouraging them into a frivilous lawsuit.
It’s a sliding scale built on risk and reward.
They will take the case if they think they can win OR when they only have a chance of winning but the settlement is going to be large.
25% chance of a $10 million settlement with a big corporation: take the case.
90% chance of multi hundred thousand dollar insurance payout: take the case.
Probably they also consider the amount of work. For all we know, both of the above could be just 10-20 hours of work.
Yeah, they should also sue the ISP, the power company, the company who built the criminal’s house and the people who paved the road he used. /s
Oh not wait they are suing ISPs for zeroes and ones that flow through their cables. Strange world we live in. No one would have sued the postal service for a letter they got, or their telco for a call they received before the www.
Stop blaming websites for crazy people doing crazy things.
When the Joker movie came out in 2019, everyone on CNN was saying it was going to cause mass shootings, because of that one lunatic that shot up a movie theater during a screening of “the dark knight”
The idiots who write the material for the talking heads just want to stir things up so they can get eyeballs on the screen.
I bet the outlets that were giving live coverage of the shooting showed ads every 5 minutes…like they did with that one really bad shooting.
And your point is…?
I made my point in my original comment.
Crazy people are just crazy
If the suggestion algorithms helped radicalize the attacker, by feeding him moreand more racist content, then that is entirely different from a mass shooting scene in a movie.
Racist content doesn’t fly on youtube…unless it’s put out there by corporate outlets.
That… isn’t true at all.
Unless they’re just blatantly saying slurs, which they almost never do, the dog whistles never get caught by the moderation bots.